


Don't Speak

by theLiterator



Series: Choke on Memories [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Darkfic, Introspection, M/M, Mirror Sex, identity crisis, still no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-05
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2018-01-22 02:22:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1572599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLiterator/pseuds/theLiterator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Soldier has an identity crisis. There is no mission, and his target has a name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Speak

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Say Something](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1569188) by [Traxits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Traxits/pseuds/Traxits). 



> So, this is basically a direct sequel to/remix of that fic, which I promised Traxits I'd write if she wrote the original.

There was a mirror in his target’s closet, cold and glass and alien.

Cold and glass and _so familiar_.

“I knew him,” he whispered, and his fingers traced out the streaks left on the glass. Who would touch a mirror, he wondered. He knew--

_"Buck, don't, I... I can't do it again."_

He knew that mirrors were easily marred, and that touching them ruined the reflection.

He shouldn’t be here, this apartment, this place. It was his mission, but then, he’d already failed at that, and then he’d seen--

Photographs, not a mirror.

Photographs _like_ a mirror, reflecting and perfecting.

A key in the lock.

His target, home at last.

Home?

 _"That's ridiculous.”_ he whispered.

A shadow hovered in the doorway to the bedroom, noticing, he thought, that the closet had been opened, that the mirror that had been hidden away was reflecting.

Something.

Wrong.

“Hey, Buck,” his target said, sounding not at all surprised and completely astounded all at once, like his own target had just walked into his scope and the wind was perfect for the shot, and, breath…

Fire.

“What are you looking at, Bucky?” the man asked. “What do you see?”

_”You know what they see, Steve? The same thing I do. Every single one of them."_

He shook his head. He had no idea what that was, where that had come from (deep-deep where the ice had never touched. He’d ached with that buried warmth. He’d hoped, more than once, that they’d find it and freeze it solid like the rest of him. He’d opened his mouth and laid back against the chair and let them bury him in the snow again and again and again, and…)

The Mission.

“I look like _him_ ,” he said.

“You look like _you_ ,” his target said.

“No…” he whispered, staring at the mirror. It should be cold, but… his reflection was there. Imperfect. He shrugged his shoulder, where the low burn of pain from using taxed muscles briefly overwrote the sensation of the nerves he no longer had.

“You know what I see, Bucky?” his target asked, moving in closer. Moving to stand behind him, which was _dangerous_. It was something he couldn’t allow. (He allowed it.) “The same thing I always have.”

The target's fingers were swift and sure as they pulled off his shirt and tossed it aside. He should have protested, except he wasn’t sure what he would have protested. His skin was not his own to protect, and the orders… were gone. Then, there was the part of him that remembered this, remembered lips pressed against his. The target kissing him. The target kissing _Bucky_. Bucky was drowning and the only thing that could save him was the air Steve could give him, and Steve wasn't the target. Steve _was_ the target, and the mission gave him air to breathe, more sure and satisfying than anything, save…

The target’s hands were on his shoulders, and he was frowning in the mirror, a little moue of concentration, or maybe he was upset by that imperfect version of a man who’d fallen in combat in a war he could not, would not, should not remember.

One hand dropped forward, a long, slow stroke across his shoulder, his pectoral muscle, his ribcage. It was easier to watch his target’s hands than to stare at his own flesh, except for how his skin was all that the target was touching, and the overlap frightened him until he was gasping for air.

The target’s other hand tipped his head back, kissed him.

Steve was breathing life back into Bucky, the way he always had.

He didn’t _remember_ Bucky. He didn’t remember the target, save, “You encountered him on your last mission.”

The Mission.

He ignored the fiery protest from his modified nerve-endings long enough to drag his hand through his target’s hair, to jerk him away. (He followed the motion, pressing an apology against Steve’s jawline, his throat, his hand.)

"I want you to see what I see," the target murmured.

He froze at those words, shook his head, but before he could say anything, the target kissed him again. Took away his words, his _mission_ and left him with nothing but _Bucky_.

"Please," his target said against his lips, and his voice broke on the word. 

“Look," his target murmured, and his hands were huge against someone else's perfect body, one on his hip and one sliding down his chest. 

The mirror was a shadowed glint at the edge of his vision, reflecting impoossible things. A memory, a man, something he yearned to forget. The target’s eyes, the target’s hands, and he saw, he _watched_. Blue and gold and everything warm in the depths of torture, and...  
Those hands slid down, and then they unbuttoned the fastening of stolen trousers, wrapped around _Bucky_ and squeezed him—

And Bucky kissed Steve back, and he tasted like blood and metal and the slightest hint of coconut; exotic and new and more familiar than even _pain_.

"Christ, Steve, just—" he hissed, bucking his hips and _thrusting_ into that parfect hand, warmth against that icy balm of forgetfulness.

"Buck," his target breathed, and the word cracked and shattered like glass.

Like a frozen lake.

Like the strongest pines in winter-time.

Such an easy name, no reason for Steve to struggle with it except...

“Come on,” he hissed, pressing into that warmth, surging for it like it was something he wanted instead of the depths of his worst nightmares.

He reached back with his flesh and blood hand, wrapped around the back of Steve’s neck and squeezed.

“I don’t…” he said, feeling raw and confused and tiny in his target’s grip, but the rest of his words were swallowed up in a tide of noise, in his head and in his throat, all of it just a wash of nerve-endings screaming out in agony, everything on fire.

“Shh,” his target whispered. “It’s just me, Buck. It’s Steve.”

His target was grinding into him, counterpoint rhythm to the blood pounding _through_ him, to the soft keening noises Bucky was making, to the harsh motion of the hand wrapped around him, and the screaming, singing, wonderful agony of all his skin, alight with pain.

( _Pleasure_ , Bucky whispered in his ear.)

He barely noticed the weight of his arm.

(His arms were the same, whole and perfect. Steve was holding him and his eyes were burning away the ice. Bucky wanted to say his name again, let it touch the coldest parts of him.)

“St--” he stuttered. 

“Please!” he sang.

“Yeah,” Steve said into his hair, dark strands clinging to his sweaty face. His eyes were lit the way only Bucky got to see them, and his mouth was swollen red and wrecked.

He was hard against Bucky’s ass, and he was burning hot like the flames of a Hydra base as it collapsed around them.

Hot like a summer that had never come.

(Won’t ever come, someone whispered inside his skin, icy winter pressing close around him, everywhere Steve wasn’t touching, couldn’t touch.)

As everything incinerated under his skin, he closed his eyes so he couldn’t see Steve’s body, oh so wrong, oh so right, behind him, but his voice was still there, right up against his ear, panting sultry breaths and whispering a name he didn’t want to hear.

It was a blistering crescendo, drawing through every nerve but the ones in his false arm, so he forgot the pain there even as he embraced the pain elsewhere…

And…

And…

When the fireburst blossomed behind his eyes and through his guts and Steve groaned in his ear one final, imperfect time, he blinked open his eyes and saw.

Blue and gold.

Warmth.

The fire fading from his target’s eyes.

( _Steve_ , a perfect stranger whispered desperately within him.)

An imperfect weapon, scars and steel where smooth skin should be.

The howling winds of his homeland’s winter.

(You knew him!)

“I don’t know you,” he said, cold and lost on a mountaintop.

His target shook his head, dislodging black strands and gold from cheek and forehead.

“It’s okay, Buck,” his target said. “I know you.”

He shook his head, once, twice.

Shaking hands doing up buttons on his jeans, grabbing for a shirt, any shirt.

The mirror behind him.

“You let me fall,” he did not mean to say.

A child’s voice said through numb lips.

“You remember.” Flat. Ice where he craved fire.

But no, he didn’t. Bucky did. A stranger in his skin, a mirror where a photograph should be.

“I don’t.” he said. There were a thousand words warring in his mind over the end of that sentence. Care. Remember. Hate you. Forgive you.

“Shh,” his target said.

“No!” he snapped, whirling and shoving, until his target was helpless beneath him. “No! Let me. Please. Please don’t.”

Words. Bucky had had words, but he was frozen solid against winter’s grasp.

“Okay,” his target said. Naked. Vulnerable.

He kissed him, but it didn’t burn as bright, and all he could taste was that strange metal, sweet, and familiar blood, salt.

The Mission--

Hands around an unfamiliar throat.

A perfect stranger screaming in the barren tundra of his thoughts.

Blue shuttered away behind closed lids, gold turned brass in the darkness.

He let go. His target gasped.

He stood up and fled the way he had come in, silent and empty and broken.


End file.
